Gut getroffen:
Mitglieder:
Klassische Quartettbesetzung. Sänger Steven Milne spielt nebenbei ein bisschen Gitarre und wird von Gitarre/Klavier, Bass und Schlagzeug begleitet. So weit nichts Neues.
Musikstil – das sagt die Band:
So klingen The Little Kicks eigentlich:
Man setze das „Disco“ in Klammern und habe das perfekte Ergebnis. The Little Kicks perfektionieren das, was man wohl als Indie-Pop bezeichnen dürfte. Wunderschöne Melodien in sanfte Gitarrensongs getaucht. Und dann gibt es hin und wieder einen kleinen Disco-Flavour im Sinne eines elektronischen Schlagzeugs, wie im schönen „Often“.
Hauptzielgruppe:
Diejenigen, die den wunderbaren Indie der 2000er noch nicht vollkommen abgeschrieben haben, weiterhin daran glauben und sich auch mit kleineren Bands zufrieden geben. The Little Kicks revolutionieren in keiner Weise die Musik. Sie machen das, was Bands wie Coldplay, Travis, Starsailor oder Keane früher so gut gemacht haben: gute Songs mit schönen Melodien schreiben.
Das sagen die Zyniker:
Bööh, Coldplay der 2000er auf schottisch und ohne Chris Martin.
Aktuelles Werk:
Ihr zweites Album „Shake off your troubles“, mit dem ich mich auf Plattentests.de genauer beschäftigt habe. Für dieses haben sich die Schotten übrigens in einem Haus bei Loch Ness eingemietet.
Zentraler Song:
Ihr größter Hit ist definitiv der Tanz-Kracher „You and someone like me“, bei dem der Disco-Touch besonders ausgeprägt ist. Der Song klopft höflich bei Hot Chip und LCD Soundsystem an und ist damit sowas von bereit für die Indie-Dizze. Besser zum Gesamteindruck der Band passt hingegen die melancholische Single „Don’t get mad, get even“.
Gut gesagt:
„I don’t want to sing about heartache anymore, I want to sing about something real“ Harter Herzschmerz-Diss im Track „Sing about something real“
Fun-Fact:
Den Namen haben die Schotten von einer legendären Seinfeld-Episode übernommen, in der Elaine – sagen wir mal – „interessant“ tanzt.
Passend zu:
Im Bus sitzen, aus dem Fenster schauen und bei Regen über die Welt nachdenken. So klischeehaft und simpel, aber wahr.
Drei Fragen an The Little Kicks
1. In „Sing about something real“ you say that you „don’t want to sing about heartache anymore“. Which topics did you sing about finally and how did that affect the music?
That song was the first song written for the new record and I guess it felt like a mission statement for „Shake Off Your Troubles“. The last record „Put Your Love In Front Of Me“ was about a certain less confident happy time in my life and hence it having a set of songs entitled „Heartbreak Pt’s 1, 2 and 3“. Coming out of that last record and more so in more recent times I have felt much happier, am much more settled and massively more confident so that fed hugely into writing. I got married and when you build up to such an event you in a way take stock of your life to that point. It made me feel very grateful for my wives support, the friends, band and everything I had. So obviously life isn’t always 100% fantastic or without issues/ bumps in the road but to me it would have been fraudulent for me to still be singing about being upset or like I was in any way still that vulnerable under confident person from 2013. Putting this song at the start of the record was always the plan and the track became the jumping off point for the rest of the records tone and content.
2. In which situation would you recommend to put on your album „Shake off your troubles“?
I think („Gone But Not Forgotten“ aside) it’s an album that would work well at a party or a night out but also it’s something you can listen to at home and enjoy too. I recommend trying to listen on headphones too as we like a lot of music and styles so the album has a lot of different sounds and touches that are maybe more obvious if you listen more closely. Generally I feel its a pretty accessible album that people should play LOUD wherever and whenever they can!
3. To me, the album is a very round thing but the song „You and someone like me“ falls and stands out a bit. Certainly it’s a smashing hit. How did it get on the album?
The writing of that song came together very quickly one day but it was a tricky track to record. I wrote it on a combination of piano and Moog synth in my house one weekend. I had had a shot of a Moog synthesizer which didn’t belong to me and I hadn’t had much time to play with it but I knew I had to give it back at the end of one weekend. So on the Friday night I played with the settings and sounds and somehow found this really big bass sound/ that bass line came out. I played that over a drum loop I made and at the same time played with the chords and melody on a piano and between the going back and forth of those instruments I had the basic arrangement / instrumental demo of the song within that night/ the next day. Over the course of the next few weeks I played with words and melodies over the top and also added more synths and when it was done I felt it was in a good place so I sent a demo to the guys and they really liked it. It was deliberately very electronic sounding and we wanted it to sound a bit like the recordings of our previous record but with a much beefier bigger sound. The brief was to sound like our previous song „Heartbreak Pt2“ but imagine it on steroids/ having bigger balls! And I think we achieved that in the studio by spending a LOT of time on the sounds and arrangements. As important as the synth sounds were it was also thanks to the guys percussion work and vocal harmonies that the song really started to fly. I love the finished recording and how Andrews guitar sounds so sleazy! Lyrically I wanted it to sound like a lot of 70s and 80s disco in that the songs are very upbeat but the lyrics can be quite dark, lonely, distant and almost downbeat to contrast the pop part of the song. I am glad you think its a smash hit – we think so too!
Und diesen „smash hit“ gibt’s auch im aktuellen that new music mix zu hören: unten und rechts zu finden.